First batch ready for bottling, second batch ready for brewing

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Cornfed

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Hi, all. Thought I'd pop in and give an unsolicited update since you've helped me so much already with my beginner questions.

I brewed a Belgian Blonde Ale using the two-step method from BYO magazine a few weeks ago. Went about 2 weeks in the primary. It fermented like crazy for the first week and bubbled almost once a minute the first few days of the next week. I finally racked to secondary a week and a half ago, and if anyone recalls, was debating about how to bottle. I have no bucket (don't want one due to space constraints since my girlfriend is already going to kill me for filling up my 1 bedroom apartment with homebrew stuff :) I was debating racking back into the primary or into the brewpot to mix with the priming sugar before bottling as I'm trying not to move the beer around too much.

I finally decided on those Carb Tabs things, and just got them (plus some more hoses and stoppers) from Home Brew Adventures today. While shopping, an order of thier SNPA clone somehow popped into my shopping cart, and that came today, too. Anyway, I'm thinking of just bottling straight from the secondary, which is clearing up nicely, into 22 ounce bottles with the Carb Tabs. Hopefully will go semi-smoothly.

I'm completely tied up on Saturday and Sunday but am hoping to get to bottling the first batch and brewing the second over the next couple days or early next week the latest. Am psyched to try my first batch in many years! It can't carbonate soon enough :)
 
Not sure what a "carb tab" thing is supposed to accomplish. Racking from your secondary and then bottling (with priming sugar) from your primary or brew pot will most likely be OK. In fact, you can bottle directly from the secondary, will need a racking tube that has opening above the trub.
 
Carb tabs are something like this.

I have no experience in this matter, but absent the sage advice of the more experienced brewers, I'd rack back to primary from my secondary before bottling if I didn't have a bottling bucket.

I'd mix up the 3/4 cup of corn sugar in two cups of boiling water, cool, add to sanitized primary carboy, rack back from secondary to primary to avoid bottling any of the trub, and then bottle from the primed carboy.
 
I think those are the same thing. Different brand, but same idea.

I was thinking of bottle priming after some stuff I read on the web and some podcasts I'd heard. The basic ideas are you want to minimize the amount of times you move your beer around (to minimize aeration and chance of infection) and you want to ensure as well-mixed a solution of priming sugar and beer as possible.

Some folks here stressed, astutely I might add, to validate what we read on the web and in podcasts against some of the more classic texts.

Along those lines, I looked at Palmer's How to Brew and he talks of batch priming by either racking to a bucket on top of the priming solution or simply pouring the priming solution into your fermenter and gently mixing. I then read in Papazian's "Homebrew Companion" something along the lines that bottle priming (adding sugar straight to the bottles) sounds like a great idea since you're not moving beer around and touching it, but that a 20% variation in the amount of sugar added might be imperceptible to the eye but may be enough to lead to exploding bottles. Also, that the sugar would need to be sanitized.

He ended the discussion saying until pre-measured, pre-sanitized amounts of priming sugar are commercially available, batch priming is preferable. Mind you, this book is 12 years old now.

Well, those are now available, so I'm saving myself a step. The advantages should be that I'll know my solution is well mixed and I won't have to superfluously move the beer and the priming tabs are presanitized.
 
I'm bottling for the first time this weekend and have decided on using my primary fermentor bucket as a bottling bucket. I've read from a bunch of other sites that adding sugar to your bottles and then straight racking is hard to balance and get the exact amount of sugar in everytime. Some of the sugar will stick to the funnel when your pour it in, some will stick to the spoon, etc. etc. This also opens the possibilities of more contamination and bottle bombs. If I was to stir without using a bottling bucket, I'd be very careful because your going to have some trub in your secondary, and if you stir, you just negated all the advantages of the secondary and your brew will probably have another layer of trub in the bottle itself. Plus, when you rack to a bucket from a glass secondary, you can keep a visual observation as to what your racking. You have a better set up to help clarify your brew.
 
Sounds reasonable, Cornfed. I think the tabs might end up costing a bit more than just using priming sugar, which is why I'd go the sugar route. But I'd be interested in hearing how they work for you when your bottle conditioning period is up in a few weeks.
 
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